Sad as it is to say, the biggest problem with the competitive-balance proposals that the Ohio
High School Athletic Association has been trying to get passed in recent years is that some who
have found a way to work the system to their advantage really don’t want a level playing field.

The proposals were intended to promote competitive fairness among some private schools that can
recruit athletes, some public schools that use open enrollment to recruit athletes and those public
schools that essentially have to play with whoever shows up. Each plan has had its flaws.

The latest attempt finally passed in a vote that was announced on Friday. It classifies every
athlete as a 0, 1 or 2 depending on whether they live in the school’s regular attendance zone (0),
have been part of the larger district or diocese since the seventh grade (1) or are neither (2) —
and shows that many educators are looking out for the greater good.

Every athlete in the third category will significantly add to enrollment figures, so a school
with a lot of those could be made to move up a division. If you represent one of those schools,
this proposal, which will take effect with the 2016-17 school year, wasn’t an easy one to
support.

“I had an AD look me right in the eye and say ‘We’re probably going to go up a division,’ ”
OHSAA commissioner Dan Ross said. “And I said, ‘You’re not going to go up a division if you are
using zeroes and ones.’ And he goes, ‘Well, we don’t. Our kids come from everywhere.’ And I said, ‘
Bingo, you should go up. If all of your kids are coming from somewhere else, you should go
up.'"

The athletic director then told Ross he couldn’t support a system like that. Ross’ response was,
in essence, “Too bad.”

“I said, ‘You’re going to be playing against people where all of their kids come from the same
system or are coming from the same community, and all of a sudden they’re playing you, and you get
your kids from all over the place, you should go up. If you do, then the system works.’ ”

No one really knows how well this system will work, but Ross and the committee that came up with
it — the fourth such try in Ohio — deserve a standing ovation.

Part of the impetus was a group threatening a referendum to have public and private schools
compete in separate tournaments, a plan that would have resulted in watered-down championships that
hurt the kids — all of them — as much as it helped them.

Separation proposals made the ballot in 1978 and 1993, and both were voted down by wide margins.
But the Wayne County group that had been advancing the latest separation proposal mailed a survey
to school superintendents in 2011 and said that 55 percent of the 319 who responded favored a
split. With the passage of the latest OHSAA proposal, by a 411-323 vote, the Wayne County group
said it is no longer interested in splitting. One of the leaders of that group, Triway
superintendent Dave Rice, was on the committee that voted unanimously to send this proposal to the
ballot.

The committee also had seven nonpublic-school members and a couple of urban district
representatives where open enrollment can have the same benefits enjoyed by a parochial school with
no boundaries.

This clearly isn’t a panacea for all of the perceived problems of high-school sports; it doesn’t
rectify a competitive-balance problem in Division I, where a school that might recruit from Toledo
to Marietta can’t be moved any higher. But it seems the simplest way to give lower-level schools
that play with what they have a fair shake.

The committee will remain to monitor the system and accept input, and it could offer potential
improvements for another statewide vote.

“This wasn’t easy,” Ross said. “There were people in the room who voted unanimously to support
this who said, ‘I’m not sure this will be the best thing for
our kids, but I think it’s absolutely the very best thing for all of the kids in
Ohio.'"